Dakar gets dusty. Within 24 hours, our balcony went from tiles that were spotless, gleaming, to being littered with the dusty mess you can see pictured here. Off-camera, to the right, is a sliding glass door and screen. On the other side, an arm’s length away, lies my temporary desk. Atop the desk are two (hopefully) long-term laptops, workstation and server, and computers are not known for liking dust.
It’s fortunate that the current weather is mild, as, even in winter, it can get WARM in Senegal, being close to the equator. Often airflow through a space is a necessity, unless you have air conditioning that you want to run all the time; power here is not cheap, and it’s prepaid. I’m already using an office full of electronic gear, and, last year, I ran our apartment out of power (it’s prepaid from Senelec) and we spent a night and a day without electricity. As you can imagine, my main strategy is to use windows and doors for managing airflow through our flat, until that’s no longer capable of keeping up with the heat. Or when things get really bad and there’s too much dust.
If I lived here for more than a couple of months, I would probably organize some mitigation, add filters and fans into the mix, and work out a way to cool my space with minimal dustiness. For now, I will simply hope the mild weather holds, and plan to relocate to an air conditioned room if things get too hot.
Speaking of Dust…
This site itself is going to be a mess for a while. I need to be working on my game, not tinkering with a website. So I’m making plans on the fly to replace my presence and activities from corporate social media services to self-hosted tools I that I own and control.
Thanks for your patience.